Wednesday, April 28, 2010

I've been suffering from insomnia again, and more or less on form, caved in and took some sleeping pills last night. I'm always a little loathe to do this, because while they do help me fall asleep, they also ensure that getting us is a right pain, and that instead of sleeping through the night, I wake up four or five times only to descend into a light sleep or pointlessly vivid dreams that usually wake me up anyway.

Which happened last night. One was rather gruesome, but an interest riff on a common dream, and the other was... odd. Even by my standards.

The first began with me renting a tuxedo for my prom. With my mother. We had had actually picked out the tux, and were selecting a matching waistcoat. Yes. I know. You don't wear waistcoats with tuxedos. I pointed that out in the dream, but I wound up picking a sort of brown and tan check brocade thing that resembled some towels from a Radisson hotel in Lisle, IL.

After that, we were walking down the street, when someone being chased by the police jumped through a plate glass window. Then that person was me. I had glass sticking out of me all over. But not like if you had gone through a window. There were pieces stacked together like pages in a book. I remember other people around me freaking out, but I was calmly trying to decide whether to pick them out or leave them in. I was thinking "it's probably like a stab wound. If you take them out the blood will pool and the bleeding will get worse." So I started picking them out. I think there were some in my nose I plucked out, but I began to not be able to breathe, and remember thinking "Ahhh. I'm suffocating. This is more relaxed than I thought it'd be."

Then I woke up. (This is the riff dream; every once in a while I dream I'm vomiting glass shards, so this is similar to that.)

The other dream I had is that I was walking through Astoria. I was walking down Ditmars Blvd towards my old house. As I turned onto 46th St, I saw someone I knew walking a basset hound, and turned away, thinking "How did I manage to time it out this badly?" I walked back down Ditmars and passed a Greek Orthodox that isn't there. I ducked in, and people were congregating in just before a service. There was a weird balcony of sort, of chair balances on a series of ropes that ran across the nave, and there was a sort of red silk rood-screen dividing the choir. You had to climb up the screen to get to the chairs. I did so, and a big Greek guy informed me that the screen was a Disco screen. I didn't argue. I think I got up and left before the service started, because I remember talking to a kid in a newsie get-up on stairs that ran the length of the outside, before a wrought iron fence.

Sunday, April 25, 2010

So there's this engaged couple where I work. I don't much mind the girl -- about the only way she ever really impacts my consciousness is that I start humming the first song on the New Pornographer's first album when she walks by -- but the guy, for some reason*, I just particularly loathe.

Until I noticed that the girl has a Twilight calendar (well, she would, wouldn't she?) on her wall with shirtless a Jacob on it**. Her fiance is the least Jacob-like person you could imagine, all pale and scrawny and Phish-listen-y. All of which, if you're me, conjures up an amusing image of the girl fantasizing about getting it hard from a wolf-boy while Weasel-boy ruts away single-A style.

Yeah, it's all a bit Artaud meets Sartre meets Genet, but it keeps a smirk on my face during the work week. And I'm preeety sure the grotty little oik totally deserves it.

*All right, he's a jerk and bears an uncanny resemblance to a weasel. Anybody who can get off looking at that probably pre-supposes the rest of this post.

**Not that I object or anything. It's arguably the seco... third... fourth best thing at work right now.